That Parcells somehow never managed to top the yearly fan voting for the right to hang a red jacket alongside the gold one he already has from Canton is what left team owner Robert Kraft finally deciding to include Parcells with this year’s vote winner, Julian Edelman, as part of Saturday’s ceremony at Gillette Stadium.
So, call him a contributor if you want, but it’s the other title that really matters. Coach Bill Parcells stands among the greatest franchise-builders in NFL history, the only one to lead four franchises to the playoffs and three to conference championship games. Upon arriving in New England in 1993, he took a franchise that had gone 14-50 in the previous four seasons to the Super Bowl four years later. He’d already won two titles with the Giants, in 1986 and 1990, with a bit of help from Bavaro.
The pride of Danvers wasn’t on the field anymore as Parcells rebuilt the Patriots, but the bruising, tough-as-nails tight end saw firsthand in New York just how Parcells changed the franchise fortunes in New England. If Bill Belichick is the franchise’s best coach, Parcells is its most important, changing a culture that was amateurish and noncompetitive.
“He had a presence about him. You just wanted his approval, you wanted him to think you were a good player. You wanted to play for him. You wanted to win for him. And I wasn’t the only one who felt like that,” Bavaro recalled in a telephone call this week. “I think most of us on the Giants felt that way.
“I can’t even pinpoint or describe what it was about him, it was just his aura. That presence. You can’t teach that. You can’t fake it. Other coaches have tried to do it. It does not come across well. With Bill it worked. From Day 1 I knew he was the real deal even though I didn’t know anything about him. He’s never done anything to make me think otherwise at any other job he’s ever had. Wherever he’s gone, guys have felt the same way.”
Bavaro’s introduction to Parcells is almost comical by today’s NFL standards, when pre-draft analysis is so deep and thorough that there are no remaining secrets. For Bavaro, drafted in 1985, it was a second-day phone call from Parcells, taken at the apartment of Notre Dame teammate and second-round pick Mike Gann, that let him know he was the Giants’ fourth-round pick.
“You want to be a Giant?” the resonant voice at the other end of the line asked, to which Bavaro said, “Absolutely.” As another college friend had told Bavaro, “This guy’s a great coach, you’re going to love playing for him,” and as Giants scout Jerry Angelo had told Parcells, “This kid is not for everyone, but you’ll love him,” theirs was a perfect match.
“Truer words couldn’t have been spoken,” said Bavaro.
That Parcells knew the game isn’t the question. You don’t get to become a head coach in the NFL without those bona fides, and Parcells had honed his defensive genius across 14 years of college coaching, including stints at Army and Air Force. It is the other parts of coaching where he truly excelled, the ability to find the right players for his system, the willingness to surround himself with similarly brilliant assistant coaches, the understanding that relationships in coaching aren’t made by cookie cutter, but individualized, with real human emotions taken into account.
“With me it was different, he just left me alone. Somehow or another he realized the less you talked to me the better off I’d be,” Bavaro said. “I noticed his relationships with everyone else, it was humorous. That’s what made him being a hard ass OK and palatable to guys because he always mixed in humor. He always gave you the sense that he cared for you, that he liked you, that he was only doing this because he thought you could be better and wanted more out of you, believed it was in there. He made guys go above and beyond what they thought they could do.”
Hindsight has a way of softening the hardest of our memories, and Bavaro laughs now when he acknowledges he’s no longer scared of Parcells the way his young self was. Now he relishes the occasional but regular phone calls from his old coach, connecting in the way you would with an older brother, or a revered uncle. He is filled with so much respect, so much gratitude.
“I didn’t realize I could be that productive in the NFL. I thought I’d be OK, might stay around for a while, but he brought me to a different level that I didn’t think I could do,” Bavaro said.
It started with a moment during a practice his rookie season. Bavaro recalled taking a seam pass to the end zone and quietly making his way back to the huddle. He didn’t think much of the catch but never forgot the exchange that followed.
Parcells: “Nice catch.”
Bavaro: “Thanks.”
Parcells: “You know what?”
Bavaro: “What?”
Parcells: “You looked good doing it.”
“No one had ever said that to me,” Bavaro recalled. “Usually they were yelling at me, to pay attention or whatever. From then on I was like, ‘I’m going to keep doing it, do it even better.’ What more can I do to get a compliment from him, to get his approval, to contribute to this team and help them win? I never felt like that for a coach ever, before or after.”
High praise, and well-deserved. Bill Parcells: Hall of Fame contributor. Sure.
Bill Parcells: Hall of Fame coach. No doubt.